EDWARD Bond’s 1974 play could hardly be more resonant in its attack on the capitalist society.

At a time when David Cameron is attempting to divert the rage against greedy bankers and profiteering in general, Bond’s diatribe - “What does it cost to stay alive?” - sounds as if it has been ripped from today’s headlines.

This production, first seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2010, is a potent revival of a tremendous play once again led by Patrick Stewart as an ageing William Shakespeare, facing death and wondering if his achievements amounted to anything.

“Was anything done?” he wails over and over again towards the end, engulfed with guilt at his passage from England’s greatest playwright to a fearful old man who compromises his ideals for the comfort of a genteel retirement in Stratford.

Bond weaves a net of relationships between Shakespeare and his disenfranchised family, especially his daughter Judith (Catherine Cusack), his ancient libidinous gardener (John McEnery) and the local landowner William Combe (Matthew Marsh) who persuades the playwright to sign a contract that will enclose the common land, thereby taking away the only source of livelihood from poor tenant farmers.

As Shakespeare questions his own past, recalling the violence and suffering of London with its public hangings and bear-baiting in graphic detail, his present actions inadvertently cause similar problems; a young beggarwoman is hanged after he assists her and his gardener is shot by his own son in an attempt to discredit the landgrabbing Combe.

If this sounds bleak, it is enlivened no end by a vein of black humour and the scene in which playwright Ben Jonson (Richard McCabe) gets howling drunk with his old rival in an effort to kick him back into life. It is the funniest scene in the play and is played for maximum impact by McCabe as he stumbles around the stage repeating “What are you writing?” with increasing desperation.

Angus Jackson’s direction is clear and literate, allowing Bond’s marvellous language to carve itself into the air. “Hate is like a clown armed with a knife,” snarls Jonson. “He must draw blood to cap the joke.”

The imagery is sensational. The body of the young woman (Michelle Tate) hangs from the gibbet above Shakespeare’s head like the Sword of Damocles waiting to fall; the penultimate scenes in a snow-covered field offer a moving metaphor for the impermanence of life itself as Stewart rolls around like a wounded bear, torn apart by his own guilt. Juicily contentious, it’s a provocative and engaging night.